Tiffany Cross Panel Loses It Over Nervous White People Fearing Reparations in ‘Atlanta’
MSNBC host Tiffany Cross and her panel lost it laughing over a scene from returning drama Atlanta featuring White people nervous about the prospect of slavery reparations.
On Saturday’s edition of MSNBC’s The Cross Connection, the host was joined by activist Tim Wise and MSNBC contributor Dr. Jason Johnson for a conversation about an upcoming episode of Donald Glover’s surreal series, which returned this spring after what seems like forever.
At issue: a scene depicting White office workers nervously discussing the prospect of paying reparations in the form of personal lawsuits. Ms. Cross and her guests lost it laughing over the premise, especially as stated by Mr. Wise:
MS. CROSS: Take a listen to this and I’ll come to you, Tim, on the other side.
WHITE CHARACTER 1: It’s cleared the way for personal litigation. Now they can look you up and force you to pay the price.
WHITE CHARACTER 2: What? No, really?
WHITE CHARACTER 1: Yeah, it’s scary. I’m looking at my family tree right now to make sure I’m in the clear everybody else is, too. (looks at Black people across the office) Lucky them. Not a care in the world,
MS. CROSS: So I will say I cheated a little bit, because I talked to our booker to get some of your thoughts on this and I found them very fascinating. Give me your thoughts on this episode.
MR. WISE: Well, first of all, it is. It is brilliant. It is genius. And and as Jason said, you know, it is sort of the nightmare scenario that my people have when it comes to this, right? It’s this idea that we’re going to have our water bill, our cable bill and oh god, there’s the Black people bill, I totally forgot to pay that one last month.
MS. CROSS: (laughs ass off).
MR. JOHNSON: (laughs ass off as well)
MR. WISE: And so to the extent that it tweaks that kind of bizarre interpretation of what Black folks are talking about when they talk about reparations or what it would look like. I think it does its job right, but what I really do appreciate about the episode is that it demonstrates the way that the intergenerational transmission of advantage and disadvantage is the ghost in the room of the national house. And it haunts us all, right? It doesn’t just haunt those who were harmed by it, it haunts those who were elevated by it. And as long as we remember, that art is metaphor, that this isn’t the literal way it’s going to happen, that in fact, reparations, if it does happen, is going to be done, because it was a collective harm…
It will be done by the collective. It will be done by the state. It was the state that enshrined enslavement. It was the state that enshrined it and kept it protected by the Constitution. It’s the state that would pay. As long as we have these parallel conversations, one is about the moral indebtedness. That’s what the episode does so well. The other is about the practical application. Then we’ll be all right.
But I got to talk my people down off a ledge now because this is so well done that White folks are like, “See, this is what they’re going to do. They’re going to show up at our house.”
Watch above via MSNBC.
